Pebble, Moto 360, and Apple Watch – these commercially available smartwatches share a few things alike. They run general purpose apps, rely on smartphones for information, and have one inch displays. It’s almost like strapping a small phone on your wrist.

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We explore how smartwatches might use non-graphical displays and still offer “smart” capabilities. To demonstrate feasibility, we present two smartwatch prototypes and show how LED arrays can be used to dynamically support several functions needed by smartwatch applications.